Letters and Sounds

[Dolphinswimmingupsidedown]

Hi - DC have moved school and will be following Letters and Sounds rather than Read, Write, Inc. Where do I find resources? I’ve got loads of Ruth Miskin stuff but just seem to find links to government docs that are out of date online when I search for Letters and Sounds... Would love any tips. Thanks.

phonics play website

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachmentdata/file/190599/LetterssandSoundss-_DFES-00281-2007.pdf

This is 'Letters and Sounds' - the whole caboodle. As far as I'm aware, there is no updated version, and this is what schools who follow it will be using.
General rule of thumb is Phase 1 in Nursery, Phase 2 & 3 in Reception, Phase 4 & 5 in Year 1, and phase 6 in Year 2.

Fab, thank you. So there’s no dedicated flash cards or reading? Or songs like in Jolly Phonics? It seems a bit poor relation in comparison with the other schemes out there 😩

The PhonicsPlay website, as mentioned above, is based on Letters and Sounds and has games and resources that match.

Thanks - just had a look. The homepage is so amateurish I didn’t think it was an ‘official’ page, so to speak 😩

Letters and sounds isn't selling anything so there are no special flashcards or books to buy. What kind of things were you hoping for? Any of the activities in L&S can be done at home probably without buying anything new.

That’s a good question. I suppose some kind of cards or fonts or ways of remembering letters that DC could get familiar with over the summer. The littlest is going into reception and used RWI at nursery so knows the pics/rhymes associated with each sound from there.

Letters and Sounds is a government produced document, not a paid for, money making scheme trying to sell things.

For just going into reception, I'd carry on with RWI stuff. Don't introduce anything new because potentially that would be 3 different ways of doing things which is far too much for a 4 year old.

(I'd actually rather say just leave him be. They'll start at the beginning in reception anyway.)

The school will likely have a preferred handwriting font so don't worry about that until your youngest starts school, just focus on anti-clockwise movements if they're even ready for that. The school will probably have a 'patter' for each letter too, e.g. for b "Start at the top, all the way down, halfway back up and round"
As a teacher I've heard awful things about RWI and personally love using Letters and Sounds as it boils it down to the basics of what phonics should be and allows me just to teach according to the needs of my children.
Is your youngest orally sounding and blending as that is what I would recommend focusing on before "proper" reading?

The little one is doing lots based on what he learnt with RWI - ‘ditties’ (simple blending), he can read CVC words, short simple sentences, recognize the 26 letters of the alphabet, decode... From what I know (and I only did a PGCE recently), Ruth Miskin combines the good bits from Jolly Phonics and Letters and Sounds. Trust me to have been in schools where I’ve done the other two schemes but not this one...